Save Me, Scrapper!

Smack!
Ji Hayeon’s hand, tied up by the tongue, stopped right in front of the Heukgu.
Ssshhh—!
Smoke rose from Sawon’s palm with the sound of flesh burning. He was gripping the tongue with his bare hand.
“Nine!”
Nine, who had gone back into the guard, changed shape again. A blade sprang from the metal on his wrist and sliced the tongue clean off.
Crash!
The Deater’s bodily fluids sprayed out, and with the recoil, Ji’s body was flung backward. At the same time, the Heukgu grew even larger.
“I-it’s a Heukgu! It’s a Deater!”
People screamed and bolted out of the restaurant.
What the hell is this.
Fissures did start from a tiny point, true. But it took a long time for that dot to turn into a line and take on the shape of a crack. It also took some time for a fissure anchored in midair to expand into a Heukgu. He had never seen, never even heard of one evolving this fast.
The moment Sawon reached into his inner pocket for a sealing device, a long tongue shot out again, heading straight for Ji.
“Like hell you’re dragging him in!”
After cutting the tongue, Sawon thrust his sword straight into the pitch-black space.
Screeee-eee-eeech!
With a shrill screech, sticky bodily fluids spilled from inside the black sphere. Sawon swung his arm up hard, then tore the blade back out. The sleeve on his left arm had lost its shape, drooping like melted ice cream. As Sawon took a step back, a snake-shaped Deater with a hole in its head fell out of the Heukgu. Thud, the whole shop rattled. His coat, stained with the Deater’s fluids, was corroding in spots.
“Do you have a sealing device?”
Shaking off his other arm, Sawon asked. Ji immediately dug into his inner pocket and pulled out a small cube.
“I’ve only got one emergency unit.”
Sawon snatched the thrown cube out of the air. He deployed the sealing device on the spot and hit the button on his comm. He pulled up the alert message he’d skimmed over a moment ago.
D2-R4>
The location wasn’t the burger joint. No new disaster alert had come in either.
Weird.
When a fissure turns into a Heukgu, it emits a distinctive wave. The Central Bureau and the Institute detected that wave, sent out an alert text, and dispatched hunters. Depending on the intensity and strength of the wave, detection could come in late. But a case like this—where the Heukgu had already grown enough for a Deater to emerge and still no alert had gone out—not once had that ever happened. In other words, this Heukgu’s wave wasn’t being detected at all yet. Sawon immediately reported the situation over the comm.
“Kkii.”
Before he knew it, Nine had come back and called to him in a small voice. The baby monkey perched on Sawon’s shoulder, staring anxiously at his arm and hand. Sawon turned his palm over to check it. The charred, stuck-together flesh was already healing fast. He went straight over to Ji and dropped down in front of him, one knee up.
“Hand.”
“…?”
“I said give me your hand.”
Sawon tugged on Ji’s fingers. The hand dragged toward him had skin flayed off at the wrist, clear fluid oozing out. Unlike Sawon’s, there was no sign of regeneration.
“Fu…”
He spat out a half-formed curse and rummaged through his clothes. Fortunately, there was a first-aid kit in his back pocket. He pinched the blue, capsule-shaped kit between his thumb and index finger and set it on Ji’s wound. As he squeezed down and crushed the capsule, condensed Metena spilled out. The gel-like Metena wrapped around the skin of Ji’s wrist.
“Ugh… that stings.”
Ji hunched his shoulders and tried to pull his hand away, but Sawon didn’t let go.
“Bear with it a little.”
The look on Sawon’s face as he said it was nothing like before—no joking, no hint of a smile. His expression was screwed up, a shadow he couldn’t hide cast over it. Ji bit his lip, not even daring to show how much it hurt.
“Sorry. It’s my job to protect you, Chief.”
The Metena formed a protective layer over Ji’s wrist. When Sawon let go, Ji pulled his hand back into his chest and rubbed at his wrist. Because of the protective energy, it felt cold and prickly, like he’d slapped on a medicated patch. But the palm Sawon had been holding burned, hot like a fresh laceration. When Sawon straightened up, his face was back to its usual casual look.
“Chief Ji. Has there ever been a Heukgu that didn’t get detected?”

He held a hand out as he asked. Ji hesitated for a moment, then took it and let himself be pulled to his feet.
“No.”
The pull on his arm brought Ji’s body bumping into Sawon’s chest.
“Then what about a fissure that evolves this fast?”
“…There hasn’t. It takes at least an hour for a fissure to turn into a Heukgu.”
“Then what the hell is this bastard.”
Ji stared at the black space that Sawon had patched together with the sealing device. A precariously hanging chunk of ceiling shook with a creak and then fell. The fragment sailing down toward Ji’s head landed in Sawon’s hand. He closed his fist and crumbled it.
Only then did the sirens go off. The location: the burger joint. It was the alert that went out after Sawon’s report came in. The Heukgu wrapped in the sealing net bulged and heaved. Ji stared at the wrist covered in a protective layer and muttered under his breath.
“I guess we have to assume the fissure mutated…”
What the two of them had witnessed was the second signal flare pulling on humanity’s extinction.
***
As soon as the Central Bureau confirmed the incoming report, they dispatched an additional sealing team. They secured the burger shop’s and nearby CCTV footage and began analyzing the wave pattern of the mutated Heukgu. It went without saying that the two of them were summoned.
All the way through the first-floor entrance of the Central Bureau building, Ji’s arm was clamped in Sawon’s grip.
Beep-beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep.
Ji Hayeon’s pager screeched noisily. Sawon muttered under his breath.
“Annoyingly loud.”
Ji twisted his shoulder, trying to yank his trapped arm free.
“We got called in. I told you, we should go to the meeting first.”
The reason Ji couldn’t answer his pager was that his pager was in Sawon’s pocket.
Sawon didn’t care in the slightest about the beeping and kept walking, towing Ji by the forearm. He tagged his palm on the central elevator gate. Even as they walked through the gate that slid open on both sides, that hard grip never loosened.
Beep-beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep.
Sawon walked right past the elevator and tagged his hand on the gate on the other side. He kept walking straight through the central passage.
Beep-beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep.
“Are you deaf? It keeps going off!”
Ji shouted. Without stopping, Sawon answered in an annoyed tone.
“Ugh, what meeting. Your wrist is wrecked. The infirmary comes first.”
“You already slapped a first-aid kit on it.”
“That thing’s only good for thirty minutes. And it’s not for treatment, it’s for disinfection.”
While they bickered, the pager finally went silent. Right after that, Sawon’s pager started ringing.
Beep-beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep.
“What if it’s urgent? How can you just ignore calls like that?”
Sawon came to an abrupt stop. His long, narrow eyes slid over to Ji, and he flashed a bright smile.
“What urgent call would I ever get that isn’t a deployment order? And if it were a situation where I had to deploy, they wouldn’t be letting the pager ring this leisurely. The whole Central Bureau would already be under an emergency mobilization order. You’ve never seen an S1 alert for the Chief go off, have you? It’s chaos. The entire Central Bureau lights up red, flashing nonstop. But what’s it like now? Quiet, right? So what does that tell you?”
“…”
“That it’s not that urgent a matter. Okay? So let’s go to the infirmary like a good boy.”
Sawon started walking again. Ji let himself be dragged along with a sigh.
“Fine, I get it, so let go of my arm first.”
“You’re going to the infirmary first, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll go, so let go.”
Only then did Sawon release his grip. His forearm throbbed like he’d been wearing a blood-pressure cuff, that’s how hard he’d been yanking on it. Rubbing at the arm that had been grabbed, Ji grumbled,
“Are you treating me like a patient or not…”
“I am.”
Sawon picked up the muttered words like a ghost and answered. After only a few steps, he stopped in front of an elevator keypad.
“You can ride this one, right?”
Watching him tap the number buttons, Ji stared blankly at the elevator. In front of them stood an elevator whose doors, walls, and interior were all transparent. It was one of only two elevators located at the back of the Central Bureau building, set against the wall.
“…What is this?”
“The director and deputy director’s private elevator. Most people don’t even know it exists.”
“And this…”
“It’s fine to use it. Don’t worry, just take this from now on. It runs to every floor.”
Ji’s lips parted. He opened and closed his mouth silently, like he didn’t know what to say, then clenched his fist tight.
“…You really are…”
At the same time Ji spoke, the elevator chime sounded.
Ding!
[The doors are opening.]
Clatter.
Sawon turned back toward him.
“What was that?”
“…I didn’t say anything.”
Face hardening, Ji slipped into the elevator first. It felt like he was fleeing to get away from him.
…Is he mad because I dragged him too hard?
Sawon tilted his head, then stepped up to stand beside him. With a clunk, the elevator doors closed. When he glanced over, the corners of Ji’s eyes looked redder than they had a moment ago. His lips were pressed together so tight they’d gone pale.
What now. What’s he upset about this time?
In the rising elevator, the outside world spread out clear as day. As he watched the people below shrink to the size of ants, Sawon gave a small shake of his head.
So damn difficult. Seriously, you’re impossible to read.
***
When anyone other than the director or deputy director rode the private elevator, an alert went straight to the secretary’s office monitors. Maybe because of that, from the moment they got on the elevator, neither of their pagers rang again. Ji, not knowing the elevator’s secret, took the pager’s silence as proof it hadn’t been anything urgent and felt relieved. Sawon did not. Knowing the truth about the elevator, he was sure the reason it had gone quiet was that the director had realized exactly where he was headed.
So it wasn’t urgent. Then why page us like that.
“What brings you in today? Are you hurt somewhere?”
The moment they stepped into the infirmary, the medic asked with a gentle expression. Sawon jabbed his thumb off to the side, into empty air.
“He got hit by a Deater. Can you check his wrist?”
The medic shot to their feet and hurried over to Ji. The damaged skin at the site of the wound, the pus and blood about to seep out, were all held in check like they were under pressure. The first-aid kit was doing the skin’s job in its place.
“Fortunately it’s not a wide area, but the skin on the wrist is thin, so it’s dangerous. Could you have a seat over here?”
As Ji sat on a small stool, he glanced around. Inside the infirmary, several devices similar to what he’d seen in the hospital rooms were lined up. While the medic examined his wrist, Ji spoke up.
“Can you measure Metena here too, by any chance?”
“Yes. We can. Unless it’s a major surgery or a critical injury, most things can be handled here in the infirmary.”
“In that case, could you check my Metena as well.”
At Ji’s words, Sawon’s eyebrows twitched.
“What for?”
“To check if I can use the Amplifier.”
“Why the Amplifier all of a sudden.”
Ji answered without even looking his way.
“We have to go back to the Institute.”
“You’re going to the Institute? When?”
“Today.”
“Today? With that hand? This is the first I’m hearing of it—and who decided that?”
“I just did. Me.”
Wow.
“Says who?”
A disbelieving laugh slipped out of him. His lips parted slightly, full of incredulity. The medic quietly focused on treating the wrist. Shoving his hand into his pocket, Sawon slouched to the side.
“I’m not in the mood to go today.”